In the field of packaging, particularly in the area of food packaging, it is often desirable to package items in a package that may be repeatedly opened and closed. For example, when dealing with packaged foods, the consumer may initially use only a portion of the food contained within one package. By providing a package that may be reclosed by the consumer, the consumer avoids having to locate a storage container for the unused portion of the food in the package. It will be appreciated that reclosable packaging enhances the marketability of such products.
To facilitate the manufacturing of packages including a reclosable seal, the reclosable seal is often provided in the form of a continuous profile strip that may be manufactured independently from the package itself. The profile strip is typically wrapped onto a spool or reel for storage until it is needed to complete the packaging process.
When a product is packaged, the profile strip is unwound from its storage spool and attached to the packaging substrate during the packaging process. Typically, the profile strip is attached to each of the side panels of the product package by heating a flange on each of the pair of mating profile members and the side panels of the bag simultaneously. Because both the profile members and the bag material are typically formed from the same material, such as polyethylene, the two components melt together forming a sufficient seal.
One disadvantage of the use of a heated sealing bar to attach the first and second profile members of a profile strip to the opposite panels of a reclosable bag is that during the heating process, the generally planar flanges of each of the first and second profile members can be distorted due to the heating process.
Reclosable zippers having one or more fusible ribs for sealing the zippers to the package material are known in the reclosable packaging art. Such zippers are found in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,673,383, 5,216,787 and 5,242,516.
Although the prior art shows examples of fusible ribs and sealant layers used to attach a profile strip to a reclosable package, the configuration and construction of the profile strip requires improvement.